


Walter Never Told Me How Lucky He Was

by Zagzagael



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-30
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 15:41:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zagzagael/pseuds/Zagzagael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saul is in over his head and if he's drowning he wants Skyler to be the lifeguard on duty.</p><p>Season 4.</p><p> </p><p>Saul? You ask. I would hit Saul Goodman like a runaway freight train.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Walter Never Told Me How Lucky He Was

Another meeting about that damned carwash. He stifles a yawn with the back of his fisted hand and sits up straighter. He lowers his eyebrows and looks from Skyler to Walt and back. He is always looking from Skyler to Walt and then back. He lets his heavy gaze loiter on her. And yes it is the criminal intent kind of loitering and no, officer, he isn't able to give a simple explanation for why his gaze is hanging around this place.

Neither one of them is paying a bit of attention to him. He’s there as arbitrator or parent or high school principal. Actually he has no idea why he’s there or rather why they’re here. Apparently Skyler has closed the deal with Bogdan earlier that day. Right now though it’s after hours, the waiting room empty save his buxomly Girl Friday who is really not in the mood to bail him out with their usual coded bail-out methods. He can almost smell her stewing from behind his closed office door. He cocks his head and considers getting up and walking out the door, leaning against Francesca’s desk; something in the idea of pressing ham on her pristine polished desktop trills a shiver down the long length of his spine and he lets his eyes flutter shut for the barest moment before he realizes the room has filled with the sound of silence. Damn, he mutters under his breath and cracks one eye open, then the other. They are both looking at him.

He nods, a tight smile, jazz hands. “Have you two considered marriage counseling? No, wait, don’t answer that, I am your marriage counselor. Right? Am I right? Okay, so where were you? All solved now, didja work it out? Smiles and forced politeness from here on out?”

Skyler’s eyes narrow dangerously and he turns his full attention on her. The long legs crossed at the knee, her skirt riding up just enough to tease but not enough to tantalize. He lets his hot gaze run from that juncture up and over her own ample bosoms and then to her face. Her eyes shoot daggers at him and he literally cannot stop the cocky grin he quick draws, a slight lifting of his shoulders and he sees her recognize the male animal in him and forgive him for ogling her. Slightly.

He gestures with waving fingers at a space around his ear and says, “You did something with your hair.”

Her face registers surprise, then delighted surprise, and he chits off a mark on his internal scoreboard. “Winning!” he thinks triumphantly to himself. She has done something to her hair and he has noticed. Can’t help but notice really. He probably would know if she had a hang nail, too. He notices her. “I like it.” He points a quick finger at her, winking. “Stay beautiful, beautiful.”

He watches her fight the compliment, watches her swallow with lips pursed, the smooth flesh of her throat contracting around the bile of revulsion rising in her throat. He just has that kind of effect on her and that’s another chit on the Saul versus Skyler scorecard. But then, without warning, she flashes her 120 volts at him and its as though her smile is connected right to his heart and he feels that muscle jump the slightest bit zapped by all that wattage. And she laps him. And that's okay, too - if she's out in front of him, teeth bared at the artificial hare - view's good from back here.

Walt is looking at his wife as though she has just pulled a paper bag off her head, trying to see, actually see her. “Did you…” Walt begins and Skyler waves him quiet impatiently.

“So,” she unfolds her achingly long legs and leans forward, towards him, towards the desk, the tiniest bit. “Escrow?”

“Escrow!” He gets it now, is able to put all the last ten minutes worth of half-heard, mostly-ignored murmured words and sentences into a semblance of sensical order. He stands, relieved. He actually needs to have Walt’s wife leave his office. Like yesterday. “Yes. You’ll be getting a phone call tomorrow. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss the appointment that the phone caller is going to set. Get the papers signed, sealed and delivered. With a kiss even, if you’re so inclined. Congratulations.” He bows slightly in Walt's direction. “To both of you. Walt, your wife is a brick house, I mean a power house. She’s a keeper. Here we go, then.” He throws the door open with a flourish and ushers them out. “Look at that sunset wouldja?”

And they‘re gone. Walt flustered as per his usual and Skyler throwing a strangely long look back over her shoulder at him. He’s won this round and yet she still has him by the short hairs. He turns on a quick heel and returns to his office, looking around, suddenly feeling lost. He walks to the chair where Skyler had been sitting and runs a hand over the still-warm seat. He lowers himself into it, his own long legs falling wide at the knee, pushing himself back into the chair, hands gripping the armrest, chin on his chest. He is in trouble.


	2. Walter Never Told Me How Lucky He Was

One of the three cell phones he has on his person vibrates and he does a quick mental checklist, yep, that one he has to answer. He twists his lips in frustration but throws the rest of his hand in and leaves the Pai Gow table with his gin and tonic. No one watches him go and he shrugs at the distinct lack of interest, he obviously was losing both the game and the attention of the elegantly coiffed Chinese gambler sitting at his right elbow. She was the better player by far but he chalked that up to her being at least twenty years his senior. Not that he would have had much luck with either – the gamble or the somewhat wrecked beauty - regardless. His head just doesn’t seem to be sitting straight on his neck lately. He rubs a hand over his nape, smooths down his comb-over and fishes the phone out of his front pocket.

He is simultaneously elated and deflated. His caller id is flashing Skyler White’s name. He flips the phone open and presses it hard against the side of his face, a deep breath, and then “Saul Goodman.” He adds, “At your service.”

A feminine giggle and a lot of background noise.

“Hello?” he asks a bit thrown.

“Are you really, I mean really, at my service?”

It is Skyler and she is clearly drunk. But it’s also her best Marilyn Monroe and he bites his upper lip hard.

“Mrs. White. Always a pleasure. What can I do you for?”

More giggling. “What can you do for me? Well, Mr. Goodman, here’s the thing. I don’t think I can drive and I can’t take a cab because I need my car tomorrow. The baby carseat is in it. Do you have a driver you can send over here to where I am?”

He closes one eye at this nonsensical ramble and decides that he’s been wasting any luck he does have on cards. “What? Do I have a driver? No I don't have a driver, Jackie O. Why can’t you drive? Where are you? Is Walt there?”

She laughs and the sound spins over the invisible cellular airwaves, into his ear canal, straight through his body, and down the length of his dick. He groans slightly.

“Walt? No, of course Walt isn’t here. Marie’s here! She’s drinking Tequila Sunrises. I don’t like those. We’re dancing.”

He groans inwardly again. “Let me understand this. You can’t drive because you’ve had one or seven to many, but you need your car, and you want me – why me? – to find someone who will drive you and your friend home?”

“Not my friend. Marie’s my sister, silly. Better call Saul.” More background noise and she shouts something incomprehensible to someone. “Can’t you drive us yourself? Have you been drinking? Wherever you are.”

“Never mind that.” He’s losing her fast and he literally can not believe that he has even begun to entertain the thoughts currently tapping a keg in his brain. “Where are you?”

“Hang on hang on. Marie! Wait, see that woman there in that purple blouse, yeah, ask her, where are we? What? Saul, we’re at “Quackers”. That’s where I am. Yep.”

Quackers?! “The bar?”

“Yes, the bar. But there’s dancing here. And Tequila Sunrises.”

“Skyler. Stay there. I’m on my way. Oh, and order a tall glass of water, wouldja please?” He castanets the phone, tips the rest of his admittedly crappy diluted G&T down the gullet, and strolls purposefully out the door and into the warm night. He slides into the front seat of his car and by that time has convinced himself that this twisted Prince Charming act is entirely for the benefit and safe-keeping of one Walter White. Entirely. He will chauffeur Walt’s drunken wife and her sister safely home. Drop off Mrs. White first, yeah, that’s the ticket. Then deliver the sister, double back and park Skyler's car, call a cab and drive himself home to bed, safe in the knowledge that he is working hard to protect his investment. He stomps on the accelerator.

The bar is a less-than-stellar establishment but apparently on a good night they also have a jukebox and inebriated dancing. He can hear the tolerable music system from the door and as he walks in the dance floor is unmistakable with flashing lights and checkerboard linoleum. He Rodney Dangerfields the knot in his tie and looks around the room. He doesn’t see Walt’s wife so he makes his way over to the bar and leans across the sticky surface and orders another gin and tonic, heavy on the Tanqueray, if you please. Then, drink in hand, he turns and there she is and how on earth had he missed her. Dancing. His hand stills with the glass halfway to his lips. The other woman dancing with her could be her sister, although there really isn’t a familial resemblance but the two are laughing generously in one another’s faces and creating a kind of feminine wall that seems to be successfully repelling the two men who are gyrating close by. Saul sits on a bar stool, hooks the toe of one wingtip over the rung, and allows himself to enjoy the show.

A drunken senior citizen to his left leans over and slurs into the vicinity of his ear. “That blonde? That’s a stone cold fox.”

Saul can only nod his agreement. She can move, no question about that at all. And she seems to know it. But even in the awareness of how delectably she can move her body she appears to be relishing the very simple fact that she can dance, can dance with her sister, can dance to 80’s r&b, can move her hips just. Like. That. And that she can dissolve into the music. And that none of it has anything to do with any one outside her own skin. To Saul, she seems completely self-contained.

For a long moment. Then she catches sight of him. And the elegance falls away and she makes the strangest cheering movement with both fists over her head and sways towards him, weaving between dancers and tables. He forces himself to sit rigid and still on the stool, watching her approach. Beside him, the drunkard snorts appreciatively.

“Mr. Goodman!” She grabs the drink out of his hand, steadying herself with the other hand firmly on his knee and pulls deeply at the liquid. He cocks one eyebrow at her and when she takes a breath he gently prises the glass out of her fingers.

“Yummy! What’s that?” She laughs, licking her lips and pressing her hip against the side of his leg.

“My drink.”

“I want one.”

“That is not a good idea. Are you ready?”

“Ready?” Her eyes cloud over and suddenly a slow, modern tune begins to snake out of the speakers and her gaze clears and she smiles mischievously at him. “Dance with me?”

Owe a penny you might as well pull out the checkbook. He tosses the remainder of the drink back and stands. She actually squeals and the sound reverberates inside his ribcage and she grabs his hand and pulls him messily back out to the floor. The song iss heavy on the bass line, and warming his ears up from the inside out. He decides he’s going to wrestle this one back into his own control. He lifts their twined hands to his collarbone and pulls her against him hard, fingers of his other hand fast on her lower back She quickly catches on and they move together in a modern parody of a slow time waltz. That will work he thinks and finds himself mystified at the stupidity of Walter White.

Just as they find their rhythm and the fullness of her female form begins to remind him of the potential turgidity of his own male form, a rude hand pushes between their bodies and then the sister is standing between them gesturing in small tight gestures speaking too low to be heard over the music and Saul walks back to his stool. His brief glimpse into the alluring boudoir of Walter White’s wife slams shut in his face. But he can’t complain, not really. The entire situation is rapidly becoming the most dangerous rattlesnake he’s ever attempted to distract and he’s done more than his fair share of snake handling. But this time, this time, he actually wants to get bit, feel the venom in his veins, ride it out, let it engulf him. Hope for an antivenin or not. This time the snake is charming him.

Time to take the ladies home. Definitely.

The three of them are outside, beside Skyler’s Cherokee. She is fishing in her purse and he has to chomp down hard to keep from asking her to produce crazy things out of the seeming bottomless depths. Bark out items Monty Hall-style: tire pressure gauge, skeleton key shaped bottle opener, a – god’s please oh please – super thin Japanese Crown condom. “Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, I want to make a deal with you.” He sighs and looks heavenward, tapping a toe. What the freakin’ hell has gotten into him.

Marie is staring at him openly. He tries his best indulgent smile on her and she scowls.

“I know you.” She wags a finger at him, her head tilted.

He stops smiling. Skyler produces the keys and hands them to him. He walks around the jeep to the driver’s side door, one ear cocked to the loud whispers of the two women.

“He’s kinda cute, huh?” Skyler trills.

“Ewww. No.”

“He’s got broad shoulders though.”

“I guess. Who is he? A friend of Walt’s? And he’s willing to drive us home?”

“Shotgun!” Skyler says in a rush and jumps into the front seat.

He turns in the driver’s seat, his hand on Skyler’s seat, his fingertips brushing the edge of the collar of her blouse. “Alright, ladies. I need directions, I don’t think this vintage vehicle is equipped with GPS. Could be wrong. Is that a cassette player?” He recoils from the dash.

“You can call a cab after you drop me off, right?”

“Absolutely…” he draws the word out long. Marie leans between the front seats.

“Are you a teacher at the high school? How do I know you?”

Skyler giggles. “He’s a friend of Walt’s, Marie.”

He holds up one finger. “An associate.”

Marie pulls a face.

“Seatbelts,” he says firmly and waits for her to sit back into the darkness of the rear seat and listens for the click of the belt.

He starts the car.

In Marie’s driveway, he and Skyler look at one another. She smiles as if he’s in on the secret.

“What time is it?” she asks and he pushes his cuff back on his left wrist and looks at the Rolex knock-off only a jeweler could identify as a fake. Buy a Rolex he put at the top of his mental list, with Walter’s money, buy a Rolex.

“Uh, not yet midnight. That’s a surprise. Where does the time go?”

“Let’s go back.”

He’s lost with this sentence. “Go back?”

She nods. “To the bar. Let’s go dancing. And you can buy me one of those drinks.”

He considers this. Really considers it. He wishes he had a pair of matched dueling pistols and a page that could be sent to Walter White’s condo with a beautifully hand-scripted challenge on a silver platter kind of deal. He spends a moment basking in the idea of an early dewy morning, back to back with Walt, the pistol in his hand.

He puts the car into reverse and heads back to the bar.

He draws the line at fast dancing. Not tonight, not with her. He feels his virility is hard enough won with this woman; he’s not about to disco in public. But he encourages her to it, to the show. He sits at a small round table for two right at the edge of the dance floor and she obliges him and he buys her a G&T - oiled not wrecked. After all, she does have a baby at home whom he needs to deliver her back to before this ride turns into squash. He grimaces at the thought. Not at the thought of pumpkin, or the baby or even the teenage son, but at the thought, plural, he’s entertaining about a MILF. A real live in the flesh MILF. This is a first and something he has judiciously avoided for all of his adult life.

She doesn’t wear a wedding band, he notices this when he comes back from the bar with two drinks and hands her one. He’s not going to think about Walt. Not in any imaginable way. Walt’s wife? Technically speaking. He’s actually had Walt’s hands on him and he’s pretty sure that with the right motivation, and this woman could be that motivation, he could take him in another round. Pretty sure.

But more than worrying about Mrs. White’s mister, he’s stumped by the entire evening. He might have been reading it wrong but he thought they were adversaries. He had told her pretty clearly, we don’t need you. And she rose to that challenge and made herself indispensable as the washerwoman pounding Walt’s dirty money clean, and he and she had grown their hate/hate relationship from there. Or at least that’s what he'd thought. He’s been wrong before, if he squints and thinks about it he might remember when that was but he's certainly wrong about this, about her.

One thing that is crystal is that his feelings for this woman were always bordering on slightly obsessive. She has been and continues to be utterly mysterious.

He’s gluttonously watched her dance three songs now and he can hear the clock strike past twelve and it’s time to call it a night. She sways back to the table and forlornly finishes her drink which she had actually gulped down two songs earlier.

“Alright, got that out of your system? You ready to call it a night?” He stands and of course Lady Luck laughs and “Can’t You See” by The Marshall Tucker Band simmers out of the juke.

She takes his hand and he steps the three steps clear of the table and chairs and pulls her into his arms. “Last one, doll. Like really really. Those glass slippers have got to be killing you by now.”

She snakes a hand between their bodies and unbuttons his suit coat and feeds her arm around him, urging his hips as close to hers as he dare go. But he goes.

“You’re in such good shape,” she whispers up into his face and his brows come together as he considers this. Is he? “How tall are you? Tall?”

“My feet touch the floor,” he laughs but he knows he isn’t much taller than Walt. Why is he giving her the impression of size? She lays the side of her face on his shoulder and closes her eyes and her face relaxes and he suddenly realizes that it’s not really sex, or betrayal, or even a cheap thrill she’s after, it’s safety.


	3. Is the Same As His Taste In Lawyers

He knows, of course, about the affair. Even if Walt hadn’t told him he would have nosed it out, that’s what he does after all. But he doesn’t think Skyler knows he knows so, of course, he doesn’t mention it. At least he doesn’t mention it right now with his best wool trousers around his ankles and his favorite fuschia oxford rucked up over his nipples. The lime green tie has been tossed over his shoulder, cavalier-style, but it was her toss not his after she used it to reel him in, to make her interest crystal clear - he was a fish on her line. He was able to shrug out of his suit coat but he has a suspicion that it might be the ball of fabric he’s currently grinding into the carpet beneath the worn sole of his left wingtip.

He’s a man who can clearly see both sides of his bread and one of those sides is buttered and even though his toast always seems to fall condiment side down on the invariably dirty lino he still knows which side is slathered and which side isn’t. And he always - always - knows who’s holding the butter knife. The last two weeks have been a relentless show of feminine force with Walt White’s estranged wife wielding the flatware. Okay, so he gave in and muddled comically through the fifteen minute legalese with Ted Beneke and he had to admit he had one eye on the garbled instructions of the delectable Mrs. White and one eye on the slender slightly effeminate man on the other side of the desk and okay his mind went there. He could not imagine the two of them twisting in their own soft core porn show. Just couldn’t do it, and that wasn’t for a lack of trying or for an ignorance of the art form.

And when it comes down to all that flexing imagination he’s got to stop and wonder why he finds the tall blonde so irresistible. Decidedly not his type. Dress size, hair color, marital status and ethnicity notwithstanding there’s just something about her that doesn’t suit his style and yet she’s had a starring role in his own personal fantasizing for some time now and the Ted Beneke connection did nothing more than act as gasoline on his already burning barrel of trashy desire.

And all of that is really just something to think about to make himself last longer because this woman is so smoking hot, so real, so solid, the pinky white flesh full and pliant beneath his fingers and he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Ted or Walt or why she’s letting him drive into her the way she’s letting him. He wants to close his eyes and just feel how exquisite his current situation is; Skyler White flat on her back on his desk, ankles hooked over his shoulders, and he’s leaning down into her, both hands splay fingered beside her head, he can feel the short silky locks of her hair trapped and pulling beneath his palms but she certainly seems past any point of caring about a pain that miniscule and he tries to not slide forward and pull her hair right out of her head but he’s beginning to see black around the edges of his vision. He can’t really say whether he’ll be able to keep from collapsing atop her or not after all its been longer than he would ever care to admit and she’s so beautiful and so willing and maybe just maybe he will fall on top of Walt’s wife when he’s finished because he can. And because she just knocks the breath out of him that much.

And because it’s his desk when it comes down to it. His office. His neck on the line.

But really, is that true, he finds himself wondering as he cracks open one eye and looks down at her, her head thrown back, her mouth slack. Walt is classic cuckold and just doesn’t seem to be able to get his ire up about the fact that his wife, his estranged wife who changed the locks thank you very much, is a grown up woman with grown up woman needs and while he’s off playing chemist in a bad Mexican B-flick his wife is playing doctor with the lawyer.

She opens her eyes, looks up at him and licks her upper lip slow and he’s up and over the edge and that’s all she wrote, the fat lady done sang her last tralala and he leans forward, slides his arms under this woman who doesn’t belong to him, and pulls her up against his chest, and presses himself back down into her ample bosoms. He turns his face to save his nose from smashing into the stapler and his mouth latches onto the side of her neck and he suckles like a baby. Her legs are wrapped around his waist now and her own arms are around his body, her fingers fast and hard in the well of his spine.There's something so comforting in being held by her that he almost, almost but doesn't, weep tears of gratitude.

They really should get up and re-dress and re-arrange clothing and find some sort of something or other to clean up the desktop and call the hospital and get a status update on Beneke. Stupid sod.

But right now, he’s been served his own slice of heaven and he’s going to digest that for a while. Skyler has his earlobe between her teeth and she’s purring some nonsense into his ear and he closes his eyes tight and wishes the stars that were exploding on the insides of his eyelids were really the stars in the night sky and that the two of them were in a Cadillac convertible with the front seats fully reclined and the atmospheric vault of say Phoenix spread over their heads, a bottle of crisp champers in an ice bucket in the back seat and two flutes balanced on the dashboard and her hand in his hand and a diamond the size of a Chihuahua’s head set in a platinum band inside a velvet box in the pocket of his waistcoat.

These are the simple wishes of Saul Goodman.


	4. Only The Very Best

“WHAT?” Mike’s voice is low but incredibly distinct. The words sharp as a stiletto to the eye.

“I know,” Saul begins but is interrupted by the cocktail waitress on her second run to their table. He hasn’t really done more than reposition the chicken-fried steak on his plate but he’s ready for a second G&T. He indicates with a wave of his hand that she should bring Mike another beer.

Mike tilts his head forward and it silences Saul. “I’m not sure you do know. My head is spinning with a crap ton of shit right now and most of that also happens to be sitting on my plate. I cannot,” he holds up his fork, “have more shit rained down on me right at this moment. Why are you telling me this?”

Saul one shoulder shrugs and puts his fork down. “I know you’re in the middle of it. At least I think I know. But before you leave for Mexico I thought I should come clean, so to speak. There’s a vibe in the air. If something happens while you’re gone….” He trails off and Mike waits. “At least you’ll have all the before details, you know, after.”

“After what, Saul? You’re slipping it to Walter White’s wife, I have no idea on God’s green earth why you’re doing that, and you’re picking up on a vibe and you want me to know because why exactly?”

The two drinks are set down on the table and the waitress waits with a rude hand on her slung sideways hip. Saul raises his eyebrows and wags his head in an exaggerated no at her. She pouts in an ugly way but departs.

Saul sighs.

“Wait,” Mike puts his own fork down. “Is this a confession? Bragging? Is this exactly like the saying about a woman taking a secret to her grave but a man needing to tell someone? Do not lay this on me, Goodman. Really.”

Saul pulls a face. “You are seriously bumming my trip here, Mike.”

“Why are you doing this? No, not confessing, bragging, what have you, but why are you doing what you’re doing?”

“It just sorta kinda, you know…” He trails off again.

Mike is shaking his head no, I do not know. “The only thing I know is that I regret the day we ever met Walter White. I mean that.”

Silence.

“And his wife. Pinkman…now he’s a different story.”

Saul downs the drink and sucks an ice cube into his mouth and pushes it between his cheek and teeth with his tongue. He’s looking into a far corner of the Town Lounge.

“You need to stop this, Saul. And I’m as serious as a heart attack. This guy….he’s not, I don’t know exactly what he is and isn’t, but one thing I do know is he’s not stable. This is not what you should be doing with this – emphasis on “this” - guy’s wife.”

“Technically,” Saul holds up the glass and spits the cube back into it, “she’s his wife, but they aren’t co-habiting.”

Mike shakes his head and diligently finishes his own chicken-fried steak, using the edge of his fork to wipe up the mashed potatoes and gravy. He wipes his mouth with the cloth napkin, folds it once, twice, three times and pushes it under the edge of the plate. He sits back and drinks his beer, watching Saul over the bottle.

“What? You’re making me as nervous as a whore in church.”

“That’s apt.”

More silence while Mike studies him.

“It feels real.”

Mike’s face shows he is stunned momentarily beyond words. “Sleeping with another man’s wife is never real, Saul.”

“Technically,” he holds up a finger but Mike cuts him off.

“Have you asked yourself why? Why you of all the Indian Chiefs on this reservation? That woman she strikes me as, how do I say this, canny? In charge? Why is she doing this? Why is she doing this with you?”

Saul scowls. “I could think of several reasons if I wanted to.”

“No, you can’t. Look at that other guy,” he waves the bottle of beer then finishes it, “that was some sort of power play, clever I’ll give her that, to get Walt out of the house. Now who knows? Maybe she doesn’t want Walt back in the house.” He looks down at his hands. “But she doesn’t necessarily not want his money back in the house. But why sleep with another man…maybe she sees you intrinsically tied to the cash. Maybe she sees you as the safe bet. Maybe she’s using you. To get to him.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“Fair? This isn’t a boy meets girl story, Saul. This is amateur Svengali stuff. You ever see that movie “All About Eve”?”

Saul nods reluctantly.

“I’m not saying nuthin’ about your virility but I’m betting she seduced you.” Here Mike looked slightly confused. “Her reasons are her secret and probably have nothing to do with you. Or not much.”

“Christ I’m going to need a fistful of Viagra after this.”

Mike shrugs and holds both hands up. “Sorry. But this doesn’t make sense. I can see you are clearly not in a position right now to be thinking about this little rendezvous with a critical eye. But you’re going to be and probably sooner than you think. We should break it down piece by piece right now and figure it out.”

“Enough. You’ve got it wrong; you’re looking at it wrong because you don’t like White. I get that, but this isn’t about him.”

“Saul, one thing I’ve learned with this guy is that everything is about him, everything. Okay, you don’t want to examine her motives. Hell, maybe she’s just lonely.”

Saul snorts.

“And I know you don’t want to hear this, but my advice is cease and desist.”

“Man.” Saul shakes his head glumly.

“Everyone Walter White touches has something real bad happen to him. Everyone.”

Before Saul can take that thought and concretize it in regards to Skyler, and Skyler and Walt, and Skyler and him, Mike stands and reaches for his wallet. Saul waves him off. “Definitely not my pleasure, but I’ve got this.

“And you’re not going to tip that gal, are you?”

“Sure, I will, here’s a tip - if you don’t know how to dance just spell your name in cursive with your ass.”

Mike laughs but cuts off the sound quickly. He puts a hand on Saul’s shoulder. “I don’t know how long we’re gonna be gone. Probably not much more than half a week. We can talk more this time next week, but Goodman, I know you know that I’m right about this.”

Saul watches Mike hunt the waitress down and press a bill into her hand and then he’s gone out into the New Mexico evening. He wonders why he couldn't just tell the man that Skyler White is scared, that maybe just maybe she feels safe with him. He fishes his phone out and sets it on the table top, motions for another G&T. He sits at the table watching the sun set and trying to will the telephone to ring.


	5. ...With Just a Right Amount of Dirty

Is it possible; is it actually possible to fall in love in a span of time that rivals the shake of a lamb’s tail? And he cannot think about a lamb wagging her tail without thinking about Skyler and her uniquely satisfying tail, shaking and or wagging. And there he is again, swallowed up by some kind of mental quicksand, being sucked down into thoughts of her, her body, her smile, her mouth, the way she moves beneath him, above him, beside him, behind him, against him, the strange promises she doesn't make but that he knows she's promising him. He closes his eyes and goes under willingly.

Lightly he bangs his forehead against the steering wheel of the Caddy. He is parked at the car wash, wondering what in hell he’s doing but unable to do anything else.

“What in the hell are you doing?” he asks himself. He has been consistently leaving “sleeping with another man’s wife” out of his answers whenever he questions himself.

This week, with Mike gone across the border, he has no moral center, no wagging finger, no narrowed gaze, no shaming cock of the head. It’s just him and Skyler and the conflagration they’ve set. Walt is clearly getting quickly to the end of a rope of his own making and Saul can’t find a good god damn to give about it. He secretly wants Walt to get to the bad end of a short fall and break his own neck.

He is caught in a tornado like some single wide parked on a Kansas plain. And being ripped from his foundations, battered and bent, was enough without adding Walt into the mix of this particular storm.

And the metaphors won’t stop.

“Get a grip, buddy,” he says aloud to no one but himself. And jumps when the gentle rap comes on the passenger door window. It is Skyler, of course. His car has never been cleaner. He leans across the seat and thumbs up the door lock.

She settles in beside him. “Let’s go,” she grins and he grins back, keys on the car and pulls into the car wash itself. He feels the front tires lock into the trolley mechanism, shifts into neutral and before he can turn hungrily to her she’s straddling his lap and he slides over into the middle of the bench seat and runs his hands up under her blouse, pulling her to him, and she grinds down into his lap. The warm friction of the flesh of her back against his palms electrifies him and he believes that if she opens his fly and so much as begins to touch him with a well-manicured fingertip he’ll be shooting sparks out the end of his dick. He moans and lets his head fall back against the seat and she begins kissing him senseless.

Outside the jets and brushless rollers wash and wax his car. No charge but it will cost him everything.

~***~

He is waiting. And the wait feels like an indefinite thing, stretching out to an impossible point that he knows full well is going to break everything, just every single damnable thing, and possibly snap the life out of him. He’s let his anger go, it was misdirected anyway, but now he’s wrestling with a bad and volatile monster of fear and anxiety. He’d pop an Ativan but he wants to have all his edges sharp, he’s got a feeling….just a feeling…that this thing could work out in his favor.

He feels like a magician on amateur night and he’s wondering if he can really pull a rabbit out of his hat. He truly has got nothing up his sleeves.

But in his pocket he’s got a business card.

He sighs and rolls over on the bed and stares at the peeling wallpaper on the wall of the shithole Motel 6 he’s waiting in on the outskirts of town. And then “Days of Our Lives” is interrupted by breaking news and he doesn’t need to turn back and look at the tv to know this is it. In some strange way, this is what they’ve all been moving towards. This place of blood and bone and tears. The doorway that White has blown open, the gaping hole in the wall of all their fucking boxed-in lives. He’s ready to step through it and walk away.

An hour later, his pay-as-you-go-phone rings. He sits up on the bed and the phone is drooling sound, a living rabid thing in the palm of his hand.

He flips it open and it seems to take a lifetime to lift it to his ear.

“Saul?” she whispers and he forgives her the use of his name in Hank's house because the sound of his name in her mouth suddenly makes everything okay. It’s going to be alright.

“It’s going to be alright,” he tells her, his voice breaks the tiniest bit and he pretends it’s a bad connection.

“Is it?” she whispers and he shakes his head no.

“I think so,” he says.

“This is what you were trying to tell me, isn’t it? This is it?”

He nods. This is definitely it. “Doll….” He trails off he has no idea what to say. He must be quiet and let her say it, let her decide it.

“Your plan,” she begins and his heart stutters and he presses the heel of his hand hard under his left nipple, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

His heart slams against the inside of his ribs, against his hand, and his eyes shut, and his head feels as though molten lava has been poured into some kind of jagged hole in the top of his skull.

“I love you,” he says, but he thinks she has already ended the call.

There is a dark silence in the space between the phone and his ear and then, “I love you, too.”

He stands at once, breaks the phone in his hand, tosses the pieces into the garbage bag on the bed, and leaves. The imaginary clock counting down all their futures has begun blinking, the red LED numbers moving towards zero.

She has gotten to the car wash first and this surprises him but there is no time to be surprised.

“Whose car is that?” he asks when he walks into the office.

“Marie’s. I’ll leave the keys here on the desk.” She is pulling stacks of money out of the safe and tossing them into a gym bag. The diaper bag is empty and he crouches and begins filling that beside her. The baby is asleep in her car seat.

“Where’s Junior?” he asks, slotting money into the bag.

She sniffs and shakes her head and he stops and reaches over, pulling her by the shoulders to look at him. “Skyler, where is he?”

She shakes her head no and his heart sinks. He stands, furious, he wants to kill something. But unlike Walter, Saul has never killed any living thing. She stands and takes his hands. “It’s fine, it’s better probably. Hank and Marie will take good care of him. He’s safe. I know he wouldn’t be okay with this. I need him to be okay. Do you understand that? I need him to be okay.” And she’s crying and he pulls her into his arms.

“He doesn’t know?”

She shakes her head against his chest and he holds her tighter trying to remember the mechanics of breathing.

Outside they are nearly sprinting to the pickup truck, she has the baby car seat swinging by the handle and he has the money and he rips open the passenger door and helps her settle Holly and the cash and herself amongst his two garbage bags lumpy with cash. And they peel out; gravel spurting like blood from a mortal wound.

“Where’s the caddy? “she asks.

“Gone,” he says and thinks about the car inside the crusher just that morning. He reaches under the seat, fingers scrabbling, and pulls out a pay-as-you-go still in the packaging and hands it to her, across the sleeping baby, watching the stoplights ribboned down the long straight length of road. They’re going to hit every one of them green on their way out of town and he takes that as an omen. He stomps the gas pedal. She tears open the plastic and pulls out the phone. He leans back, reaches into his pocket and hands her the card. She punches in the numbers and he flips the card over in her hand and points at the words on the back.

“Hello?” she says into the phone, her voice shaking.

“It’s a machine,” he whispers across the cab of the truck, and she nods and then visibly steels herself. “Good girl,” he says and looks back at the road.

Skyler takes a deep breath and then calmly says into the phone, “I need a new dust filter for a Hoover Max Extract Pressure Pro Model 60.”

~***~

Weddings aren’t cheap and they had saved for this one for over a year. Smart girl, the bride, she’s like a human iPhone app, just totally precise and on task. He admires this in her. She’s worked hard and has paid for the more extravagant touches. He also had his own super stash and was able to gift her a diamond solitaire necklace for her “something new” and it shines at the base of her throat and he likes that. He likes to spoil his girls.

Right now he’s holding her in his arms and he marvels at how that has changed over her twenty-six years, from him learning how to rock her to sleep while dancing around the living room, to the toddler standing on the tops of his feet, to her girlish need to lead, to the somewhat surly and uninterested teen years when he would insist on waltzing her through the kitchen, and during the month-long ballroom dance lessons she signed them all up for before the big day. Now that day is this day, the spotlight is on just them, and he squeezes her tight and she squeezes back and then whispers to him, “I love you, Big Poppa.” And he closes his eyes and when her new husband breaks in he reluctantly lets her go. And stands forlorn for a long moment until his own wife, her mother, finds him on the dance floor and pulls her towards him and they join the other couples dancing at their daughter’s wedding.

“She looks so beautiful,” she whispers against his cheek and he nods but then pulls back slightly and looks at the woman in his arms, really looks at her. Time has been kind to her and she has been kind to herself. And she still revs his motor unlike any other woman on earth.

“Just like her mother,” he says and surprises them both with a deep kiss. She lies her head down on his shoulder, her cheek against his collarbone, and they keep dancing. They love to dance.

Beside them there is a friendly and loud scuffle when the bride’s kid brother attempts to break into the dance between the newlyweds and he secretly urges his son to it. The young man succeeds in stealing the bride away and in an effortless kind of tango move he has his sister in his arms and they are hamming it up as couples move to the side. His grace and rhythm are natural gifts, his good looks suit him, his personality is a high octane mix of manic energy and an overwhelming need to make everyone around him happy. His father admires this in him. Both of his children look just exactly like his wife and that makes him very happy.

He stops dancing, holds his wife tightly against him, and watches their children move through what is quickly becoming an obviously rehearsed and choreographed salsa piece. Wedding guests are clapping and hooting. And he claps and shakes his head and is overwhelmed by joy.  
A little while later he sees that the photographer is packing up. He walks over.

“Did I get my money’s worth?” he asks and the young man straightens up from the bags of gear on the floor and smiles.

“I think so, Professor McTearny. I hope so.”

“Hope? Did you just seriously tell me you hope you did your job? He who lives upon hope will die fasting.”

The man laughs. “I definitely got what the bride wanted.”

Saul considers this, nodding. The photographer is one of his Business Law students at the local junior college and he worked a trade with him for the wedding album. “Good. I have one last request.””

“Shoot.”

“I’ll meet you out on the veranda in five.” And he turns purposefully and begins scanning the ballroom for his family.

It is quiet and very cold outside and it has begun to snow again. The party is inside on the dance floor and he will return there and maybe even get a little bit drunk before the evening is called to an end. But now he’s directing the photographer and together they are setting up the shot. He wants a picture of his family. He has nothing against the groom, the new son-in-law is perfect for his daughter and he knows this but he wants a photograph of just the four of them. The family he built from bone and blood and tears.

He pulls his wife under his left arm and nestles her against his beating heart. Their daughter is on his right and their son joins his mother on her left and they sling arms around one another, they have always been overly affectionate, and his son gooses him but he doesn’t jump, very much, and then he’s telling the photographer, take it, this is the shot I want, take a few, everyone smile, nobody blink, Seamus cut it out already, make your Old Man happy, okay, everyone say “sheep shit” and the flash fires and Saul Goodman who has been living Sean McTearny’s life for twenty-five years smiles.


End file.
